The world does not so exist, no parts palpable or impalpable so exist, No consummation exists without being from some long previous consummation, and that from some other, Without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the beginning than any.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Yet it is not possible that we should remember that we existed before our body, for our body can bear no trace of such existence, neither can eternity be defined in terms of time, or have any relation to time.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

It is tolerably well known that except beneath his searching eye no considerable event can occur—and his whole attention was focused upon that apple-pie!
— from Cobwebs from an Empty Skull by Ambrose Bierce

Goods and 2, for Jos. K. Brick A., I. and N. Sch., Enfield, N. C. Everett, Mystic Side C., 20.58.
— from The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 03, July, 1900 by Various

As a contemporary poet said— Ego nolo Cæsar esse, Ambulare per Britannos, Sythicas pati pruinas.
— from Early London: Prehistoric, Roman, Saxon and Norman by Walter Besant

After forty years of strained relations, vexations, patent or disguised, and even of real advantage gained from the exact and intelligent administration of Germany, the Alsatians persist in their refusal to become Germans: and, though they might give in from sheer exhaustion, nothing could ever wipe out the memory of the sufferings of the generations, forced to live in exile from their native land, or, what is even more pitiful, unable to leave it, and compelled to bend under a yoke which was hateful to them, and to submit to the seizure of their country and the slavery of their people.
— from Jean-Christophe in Paris: The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House by Romain Rolland

Then we observe that the plain man's world is in a muddle, just because he has tried to arrange its major interests round himself as round a centre; and he is neither strong enough nor clever enough for the job.
— from Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People by Evelyn Underhill

Consequently it does not start from the truly creative stand-point, that of creating something entirely new, creation ex nihilo as distinguished from CONSTRUCTION, or the laying-together of existing materials, which is what the word literally means.
— from The Doré Lectures Being Sunday addresses at the Doré Gallery, London, given in connection with the Higher Thought Centre by T. (Thomas) Troward

If I remain, the probabilities are that I shall meet Jessie Loring, who will come forth gradually from her seclusion; and I am not strong enough, nor cold enough for that.
— from The Hand but Not the Heart; Or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring by T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur

the graceful arms holding the guitars; the sweet rich voices threading through the roar of the ocean like the melody in a grand recitativo; the old men and women crouching like buzzards on the stones, their sharp eyes never closing; enfolding all with an almost palpable touch, the warm voluptuous air.
— from The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton